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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

Revenuein 1685.

border. In the train of peace came industry and all the artsof life. Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions northof the Trent possessed in their coal beds a source of wealthfar more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was foundthat, in the neighbourhood of these beds, almost ever} 7 ma-nufacture might be most profitably carried on. A constantstream of emigrants began to roll northward. It appearedby the returns of 1841 that the ancient archiepiscopal pro-vince of York contained two sevenths of the population ofEngland. At the time of the Revolution that province wasbelieved to contain only one seventh of the population. * InLancashire the number of inhabitants appears to have in-creased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamp-tonshire it has hardly doubled.**

Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence andprecision than of the population. The revenue of England,when Charles the Second died, was small, when comparedwith the resources which she even then possessed, or withthe sums which were raised by the governments of the neigh-bouring countries. It had, from the time of the Restoration,been almost constantly increasing: yet it was little more thanthree fourths of the revenue of the United Provinces, andwas hardly one fifth of the revenue of France.

The most important head of receipt was the excise, which,in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundredand eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. Thenet proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to fivehundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not

* Dalrymple, Appendix to Partll. Bookl. The returns of the hearthmoney lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the provinceof York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.

** I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but I believethat whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returns of hearthmoney in the reign of William the Third with the census of 1841, willcome to a conclusion not very different from mine.